When you pick up a book to read, do you also pick up a pencil, ready to mark up the margins with your thoughts and ideas? If so, your written additions are part of a body of writings called marginalia. For many readers, scribbling on the pages of books is a beloved, recreational practice. For others, it's more of a necessity. Whether they are humorous jots and tittles, lessons learned from the sto... [more]

Looking at the history of book banning worldwide, from Henry VIII's destruction of Catholic iconography and religious books during the dissolution, to Hitler's famous bonfires of any work deemed insufficiently Germanic in the 1930s, and up to today's over-zealous parents eager to shield children from whatever they imagine was absent in their own childhoods, some books simply appear to attract more... [more]